Senate and House final snapshots, 2014

November 4th, 2014, 1:54am by Sam Wang

Here are final polling snapshots for Senate races:
Put your own predictions in comments! Some more notes…

The calculations above will test the question of how well we can do with polls alone. As always, we did not do any house-effects corrections or fundamentals-based modeling. This is a polls-only snapshot.

Technical notes: The same methods were used as for the gubernatorial snapshots. The error bars are SEM of the polled demographic. To calculate win probability, I have incorporated an additional possible 2.5% error to account for polling error/bias. To see how many polls were used, see this spreadsheet.

House: Republicans win popular vote by 1.5 ± 2.0%, gain 8 ± 6 seats.

Please give your own predictions in comments. What surprises do you predict?

91 Comments so far ↓

I think, at the end of the day (which day may be in early January after a run off in Georgia), the dems hold the senate.
Probably 50/50, giving Joe Biden, finally, some real power (which his vice presidency hitherto has not provided).
From my lips to God’s ear…..

After much soul searching and cribbing from previous posters, I’ll make a pretty standard prediction.

R: AK, AR, CO, GA, IA, KY, LA (after run-off)
D: NH, NC
I: KS

There will be a lot of “dust,” but, when it clears, that’s how I see things.

As I see it, there may be three surprises, none of them happy for the Ds. KS, NH or NC may go R. As of now, I believe KS is the most likely.

As far as Orman, I believe it is more complicated. I suspect that Sen. Manchin (D-WV) will switch parties, particularly if NH, KS or NC go red and the Rs control the Senate outright. If that happens and Orman wins, expect Orman to caucus with the Rs. That means 54 Rs/ 46 Ds because of the Manchin flip. It gets even worse if either NC or NH flips, too.

Back in fall 2013 when people were talking about a massive Republican wave election, I calculated whether the Rs would have enough votes to convict Obama in a Senate impeachment trial if they won every single Senate election in 2014. I figured out that they didn’t; they’d be just barely short. Nor can they override presidential vetoes without Democratic votes. (And they’re not really going to win every single Senate election; some of the D seats up for reelection are quite safe.)

Having determined that, I decided there was a limit to how bad things could get.

My pick would be that that at least two out of AK, CO, GA, IA go Dem and Orman Caucuses with the Dems, my best guess is that it will be AK, and CO, I have been getting the feeling that the Rep are on to Sam and Nate and they have been pushing polls to the Rep to game the system.

I’ve seen nothing in the last six weeks to change the prediction I made to the NYT on September 27: The GOP will pick up AR, LA, MT, SD, and WV, plus one (but only one) of these three: AK, CO, IA. (These are all too close to call, even this morning, and I think a 2-1 split either way the most likely. As I’m a Democrat, I’ll make it a 2-1 split favoring the Democrats!) Meanwhile, the GOP lose KS and GA. That’s a net gain of 4 for the GOP, making the new Senate D+I 51, R 49.

I predict, hopefully, that the Dems hold the Senate with a 50/50 count, VP Biden holding the tiebreaker vote, due to Dems outperforming the polls, the polls under-polling minorities, and a stronger ground game in the Dems GOTV effort.

How did the pollsters miss Virginia so badly? No matter who wins, this election wasn’t even supposed to be close. The race tightened at the end but the absolute closest poll had a 7% Warner advantage. Something seems wrong, here.

While following this blog, I was pretty appalled at the biased data and especially the commentary here. I was hoping for a real discussion to gauge how the night was going to go, but found some of the predictions borderline insane and clearly driven by pure emotion. Next time, how about real analysis without the optimistic delusions?